#will reblog when we go live!

[fenrirlives]

TONIGHT!

We have Chapter 3 of White River Oaths!

Behold as two wielders of Elemental Power must brave the Great River of Frost, with only the flames of the past to protect them!

We'll be showcasing Ryoko's Guide to the Yokai Realms' brand new player class: The Bender tonight! Get out your Avatar shirt and prepare for some Earth and Fire Bending Ferocity tonight at 10:45 PM CST!

[plushri-moved]

edited 22/02/2024 - my mum helped me raise the match goal from £100 to £200

edited again 22/02/2024 - I met and exceeded my goal! Donations are still very welcome because I think it's really impactful to show our collective donations, I will close this on the 27th when I am paid and can make my donation

Idea credit goes to @ibtisams and I was inspired by @stuckinapril and @geekydragon !

I am doing a donation match!

I will match every pound donated, from now until next week, up to £200! I will donate £50 regardless of the outcome.

-

1. Donate any amount you can to one of the places below:

UNRWA | Palestine children's relief fund | esims (link is a how to guide!) | Operation olive branch (any family that resonates with you)

2. Send me proof/receipt showing the date and amount, cross out any other information you wish

(currency does not matter, I will convert it and donate the equivalent in GBP)

3. I will update in the reblogs how much has been donated so far, and will make my matched donation on the 27th of February (when I get paid the money I plan to donate)

I'm currently planning on splitting my donation across the above sources, but I will donate £200 total.

-

If we meet the match goal we will raise £400 for people who desperately need it right now! It's easy to feel a small donation doesn't help, so hopefully this is a way to illustrate how it all does really add up.

Any amount helps, if you have £1 to spare please do, but if you can donate more I urge you to

If you have nothing to spare, please reblog and do your daily click

[sainz100]

Carlos Sainz | F1 London Live in 2017 | x x x x x

[blackberry-sage-tea]

Apologies but I have another stupid long analysis post. Been thinking about this and I think Veilguard defenders aren't necessarily wrong that Veilguard's main choices "matter" about as much as prior game choices matter--that is, in that they have a superficial impact on dialogue and story paths, while the core narrative is ultimately unchanged (albeit it has way, way less of those superficial changes). Dragon Age's main appeal as an RPG series (imo) is that it tries to balance player freedom with having a coherent and emotional narrative in a way that a lot of RPGs can't (either because they let you kill major NPCs if you want or because the endings diverge so heavily the next game has to be 100 years later), so it's always been more limited in what you can do. It's mostly always been down to dialogue, cameos, and side quests.

But the thing about Veilguard's major story choices is that it doesn't give you any context to appreciate what you're choosing or why you're choosing it. And so they FEEL like they don't matter in a way that prior games never had a problem with.

In DA:O your major choices come at the end of a quest chain. Harrowmont or Bhelen, werewolves or elves, mages or Templars. These choices have very little impact on the rest of the plot, your story is not significantly different for picking one or the other (except for, again, the superficial things). The thing that makes these choices feel weighted is not the consequences of which ally you have at the final battle or a single paragraph at the end, it's that you spend a lot of time building up to them--you are given the full context for what you're choosing, the game is asking you to make a decision on a topic that you are now very well informed on. You know what the stakes are for this choice, even if you don't see it outside of an epilogue blurb.

Awakening, similarly, has its main story choices near the end--Do you save Vigil's Keep or Amaranthine? Do you side with the Architect or against him? These impact the plot almost not at all because of their placement, it's a "future consequences" thing, but it feels like it matters because the game has spent its whole runtime telling you what choices you're making and building them up through its side quests. It's asking you what you think is most important.

DA2, same deal. The lesser story impact on your choices is, in this instance, more of a technical constraint this time around (the game is very unfinished so you're pretty much press-ganged into the Templar route for a good chunk of it) but all of the choices you make are based around things the game is constantly giving you context for. How you feel about the Qunari, how you feel about Templars and Mages, how you feel about the Chantry, these are things the game is ABOUT and so there are no major story choices where you ask yourself, "why should I care about this?"

Inquisition fumbled this a smidge, I think. The mage-Templar choice is a very early one, and it's given to you without much time to build context for it (if you're a new player, that is), however that's the choice that has a little more story impact than normal and unique quests for each so it's not as big a deal. The other choices though, they also come at the end of questlines where you get to know the stakes and the characters involved. Who do you leave in the Fade? Do you wish to redeem the Grey Wardens or not? Who do you think is the best ruler of Orlais? Should you drink the Well of Sorrows, given what you've learned of Elven history? I have my criticisms of the writing for these quests but like most people I appreciate in hindsight that it still followed the pattern of "your choices matter because you know what you're choosing and why it's important".

Veilguard doesn't do that, and that's why its major choices (what few there are) feel like nothing despite arguably getting the same amount of story impact that previous games did (ie, its mostly dialogue changes and slightly different side quests).

Who do you pick to help you in the opening? I mean, does it matter? The situation is dangerous whether they're helping you or fighting demons alone, there's not really any way to anticipate that the one who comes with you is getting seriously injured outside of "this is a video game". Should you help Treviso or Minrathous? Well, I mean in-universe as Rook I'm doubtful that there's anything I can actually do to save a whole city given my lack of resources (plus each city has a collection of warriors about as capable as me) and tbh I barely know anything about either one because this is pretty early game, I've just been focusing on recruitment thus far. Do you punch the First Warden or not? Yes…? I mean I get that it wants to give you a choice but I've been given no indication that there's a guy capable of reason in there--even the whole "You're hearing your Calling" thing is given AFTER the choice is made, and it's not like punching out the First Warden would have major consequences for the Wardens as an order, he's just a politician. Do you pick Davrin or Harding for your secondary team? Am I supposed to know in advance that this is going to get them killed? I'm picking the person I think is best for the job, and sure enough they successfully do the thing I picked them for. It's only later, after the choice is no longer relevant, that the consequences bear fruit. Do you pick Neve or Bellara to undo the wards? I mean there's no reason why that choice leads to Elgar'nan grabbing one or the other, it's literally just who is standing closest to the mirror when he shows up.

And this isn't even going into things like "Who should be Archon?", which is relegated to a single fucking side quest (unless you saved Treviso in which you have no choice) and your options are "reformist who wants to use dirty tactics" and "reformist who wants to use naive tactics" given to us after having 0 development on Tevinter's actual sociopolitical system and how it works other than "it's bad". Oh, and both candidates promise to support each other with no hard feelings and none of the people you ask have strong feelings one way or the other, just vague preferences.

You see where I'm going with this, right? The ONLY major choice the game has you make that it has spent the whole game building up to is how you want to deal with Solas, but to a long-time player who got more, BETTER context for who he is in Inquisition and Trespasser, it feels painfully unfair and lackluster in execution (it's not an exaggeration to say this game told me nothing about Solas as a person that I didn't already know going in, except for the things that directly contradicted his prior characterization). And of course, that's just one character--you're not being asked to make a decision that impacts the world (because the world consequences are the same no matter what), you're just deciding what flavor of Solas you want for your ending.

Your major choices don't matter not because they have less impact than prior games (which is a separate argument), or because there's less of them (this is true but it's not the point I'm making here), but because these choices are arbitrary as hell in the moment you're making them. You're not given the tools to care about them. All the reasoning people give for one or the other? Entirely meta or based on future knowledge. The narrative doesn't inform the decisions, the mechanics do.

[lulubeanie]

What is this thing.. why is it here..

[b4kuch1n]

frog documentation. frogcumentation

I think I mentioned a while back I'd post nibling frog momence after the gift's done given. which happened on the 2nd this month I just forgot lmao. anyways we can do it now. I used the boigameista pattern scaled up to four pieces of A4 print paper and decided to double deck it to a two layer thing, not unlike a pillow, for ease of washin. because it was gonna be gifted to a one year old child

took a long time and made a number of mistakes bc hand sewing makes me worse as a person but this guy was done in time for the birthday occasion and that's what matters. chose non-fuzzy fabrics for it because we live in a dense city in the tropics and from personal experience if I hug something made of fur I would explode. the original plan included felt patterns on its back for bonus textures for baby but that wouldn't stretch well along with the rest of the thing so had to hold that back. eventually we got this

zipper across its ass, the coat type of zipper bc I miscalculated when ordering. but it did have a shape and that's all that matters to me. will be a fun game for the baby to grow up and be severely misinformed about what a frog looks like

happy extremely late birthday to this thing also

[fenrirlives]

TONIGHT

It's either Bug Fables

or more Power Rangers Writing/Art!

(I wish I knew why these two gifs show up in the search results)

regardless, we'll be locking and loading at 8:30 PM CDT! Hope to see you there!

[thelilylav]

Crashed out about the Prime Minister calling a snap election in the reblogs and ended up getting blocked LMAOOO

[greenlings]

grief is so wild because one minute you'll feel like you're finally coping or moving on and then the next you're crying because you suddenly remembered how things used to be and that you can never go back

[yoshipea762]

You know something is bad when even your mother knows something can be misused for evil purposes.

As far as I can tell, KOSA seems to ignore the fact that people on the internet want to express their true selves or seek help. They have good intent, but mass surveillance and denial of vital information just... Isn't the way. The internet already has privacy issues, and the US is already a shithole with leaders that don't care about us.

Hell, the US is more focused on aiding Isreal's attack on Gaza rather than helping Gaza survive or... hell, helping their own people! This is weird for an American such as myself to say, but even China's government aimed to stop poverty while being poor is basically illegal in the US, and that says something.

Let that sink in before you read on.

Poor people, being thrown in prison and having their rights removed instead of being helped by the locals or even state officials. All because they can't afford crap.

Fucked up, ain't it?

They don't need to make the problem worse by making the internet basically inaccessible to us Americans. If protecting children is your only real concern atm, look for another way to solve the problem instead of stubbornly pushing to pass the same bill every damn year.

Sure, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette, but these aren't the eggs you're meant to crack. Shutting out people of different sexuality, race, religion, or whatever else makes us ourselves for the sake of protecting kids isn't it.

Besides. I don't want to kiss the internet(and everyone I met here) goodbye. I don't want everything I've created and shared so far to be in vain. And I don't want to wake up one say to find out that I need to reveal my own face just to watch Youtube for probably a few minutes.

Nobody does.

Please put an end to KOSA. And while you're at it, look for ways to make the world a better place. Assist the poor and back them up, even.

Tumblr's freaking out over KOSA, the world's a shithole that needs to be fixed(moreso in some areas than others), and I get it. Our own rights are at stake here, and so are the people of Palestine.

And it upsets me just as much as it upsets you.

We just have to put our differences aside, and fight for what's right.

[bukuoshin]

Mfw I get sick once for the first time in seven years and it ruins my mental health for potentially three months straight ahahah

[fenrirlives]

TONIGHT

We're heading back to Mournstead with Jimm as we try to use Fire Demon slaying to cover up the fact that I lost to Cow Girl Propaganda!

IT'S THE RETURN OF RADIANT INFERNO: A LORDS OF THE FALLEN CO-OP CAMPAIGN!

[r0semultiverse]

WAIT- is this one of the alternate timelines created from the space-time sword ("Shintō Amenogozen")!? 👀

I'm an anime-only bsd enjoyer & ever since that damn sword popped up after Atsushi & Akutagawa killed him on the boat but he was able to erase/undo(?) that timeline, I've been thinking that technically means there's multiple timelines. This would be the one where Fukuchi won that conflict we just saw or something else entirely is going on given the way he's dressed (if that even is him)! 👀👀👀

[anthropomorphicspider]

Watching Glee and omg it has the best pilot ever??? Like how could anybody watch that and not need to invest a gajillion dollars??? So much happens in so little time and you need to know what happens next and it’s so hopeful! Call me a geek but honestly could not believe that was all one episode and I love all of it.

[troublcmakcrs]

//what if i gave craig my specific brand of aromanticism where he rarely gets crushes or feels romantic love but when he does he's an absolute deranged little freak about it

[bitter-and-queer]

.